- Nigeria: Regime charges six with treason over alleged coup plot
Source: Seattle Times
“Nigerian authorities have charged six people, including a retired major general and a serving police inspector, with terrorism and treason, over an alleged plot to overthrow President Bola Tinubu, according to a charge sheet seen by The Associated Press on Tuesday. The six were all in custody. A seventh suspect, former Bayelsa state Gov. Timpre Sylva, is accused of helping to conceal the plot and is still at large. … The Nigerian government first said it had foiled a coup attempt in January, when it announced that several military officers would stand trial.” (04/21/26)
- South Korea: Police seek to arrest K-pop mogul behind BTS
Source: ABC News
“South Korean police said Tuesday they are seeking to arrest music mogul Bang Si-Hyuk, chairman of the agency behind K-pop supergroup BTS, as they expand an investigation into allegations that he illegally gained more than $100 million in an investor fraud scheme. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency confirmed that it has asked prosecutors to request a court warrant for arresting Bang, the billionaire founder and chairman of Hybe. Bang’s legal team in a statement to The Associated Press did not directly address the accusations but expressed regret that police were seeking his arrest ‘despite our full and consistent cooperation with the investigation over an extended period.'” (04/21/26)
https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/south-korean-police-seek-arrest-pop-mogul-bts-132225840
- Myanmar: Junta Seeks Peace Talks, Resistance Rejects Offer
Source: US News & World Report
“Myanmar’s new military-backed government wants to hold peace talks with opposition armed groups by the end of July, the country’s junta leader-turned-president said, but two key rebel groups rejected the offer on Tuesday. State media reported that President Min Aung Hlaing, who led a coup five years ago that plunged the Southeast Asian country into a civil war that continues to rage, told a government meeting that he wanted rebel groups that were not part of a ceasefire deal to join talks to be held within 100 days. … Myanmar has been in turmoil following the coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who was subsequently imprisoned for 27 years on charges her allies say were politically motivated. Last week, the government cut the 80-year-old’s sentence by one-sixth.” (04/21/26)
- Federal judge blocks Nexstar-Tegna TV station merger until antitrust lawsuit is settled
Source: NBC News
“A federal judge has blocked a $6.2 billion merger of local television giants Nexstar Media Group and rival Tegna until an antitrust lawsuit is resolved. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Troy L. Nunley in Sacramento, California, made the ruling late Friday afternoon, finding that eight attorneys general and DirecTV were likely to prevail in their legal bid to stop the merger. The attorneys general, all Democrats, and DirecTV contend the merger will lead to higher prices for consumers, stifle local journalism and that the deal runs afoul of federal laws designed to protect against monopolies.” (04/20/26)
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/federal-judge-blocks-nexstar-tegna-tv-station-merger-rcna340788
- Cuba: Regime confirms talks with US officials, urges end to Trump energy blockade
Source: France 24 [French state media]
“A senior Cuban diplomat on Monday confirmed recent talks in Havana with US officials, as the communist-led island faces a deep crisis over President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign. ‘I can confirm that a meeting between delegations from Cuba and the United States was recently held here in Cuba,’ Alejandro Garcia, the foreign ministry’s under-director of Cuba-US affairs, told the Communist Party newspaper Granma. Garcia said that the negotiators included assistant secretaries from the US State Department and Cuba’s deputy foreign minister.” (04/21/26)
https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20260421-cuba-us-talks-trump-energy-blockade
- The Onion launches new bid to take over Alex Jones’s Infowars
Source: Politico
“Satirical news website The Onion announced Monday what might seem to many like one of the media outlet’s signature jokes: it’s in the final stages of an agreement to take over Infowars, the far-right website founded by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. But The Onion — for once — was dead serious. The new deal would see The Onion’s parent company pay an $81,000 monthly licensing fee to Gregory Milligan, the court-appointed bankruptcy manager for the website. It’s a Hail Mary bid by the farcical publication after a judge blocked its initial plan to acquire Infowars in 2024 during a bankruptcy auction. The Onion had offered $1.75 million for Infowars’ assets — hoping to relaunch the site as a parody of itself — during a bankruptcy auction and was declared the winning bidder, but Jones was able to block the acquisition by arguing before the court that the bidding process was tainted by illegal collusion.” (04/20/26)
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/20/the-onion-alex-jones-infowars-bid-00881444
- Greece’s 19th Century Currant Crisis: A Warning Against “Temporary” Government Support
Source: The Daily Economy
by Daniel J Smith“In 1895, Greek journalist Vlasis Gavriilidis traveled to Cambridge University seeking advice from three leading economists — Alfred Marshall, Henry Sidgwick, and John Neville Keynes — on the most urgent economic problem facing his country: a collapsing market for currants (Corinthian raisins), which then accounted for roughly half of all Greek exports. \Overproduction, fueled by earlier government policies and a temporary export boom, threatened widespread rural unemployment and poverty. The economists offered divided counsel. That ambiguity gave organized currant growers the opening they needed to lobby successfully for a price-support system — a ‘temporary’ intervention that promised stable incomes for growers while shifting costs onto taxpayers and distorting the broader economy. … The measure was anything but temporary.” (04/21/26)
- A Justice in Full
Source: Law & Liberty
by Mark Pulliam“Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. has served on the US Supreme Court for 20 years, but has never gotten the attention — or credit — he deserves. … Alito’s lack of public recognition is about to change. Mollie Hemingway, well-known center-right journalist and best-selling co-author of an excellent account of the tortuous confirmation process inflicted on Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, Justice on Trial, has written the first biography of Alito, entitled Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution.” (04/21/26)
- The AOC-Schiff Thesis
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob“I wonder how many others were amused, as I was last week, to hear Senator Adam Schiff praise members of his party for the ouster of his fellow Californian and Democrat, Rep. Eric Swallwell, from Congress. The tale, as told on this website on Sunday, is that Swallwell — one of Schiff’s closest colleagues pushing the Russiagate gambit against the first Trump administration — was pressured to resign over the massive amount of complaints against him for sexual harassment and other unwanted sexual advances. There is even an accusation of rape. Also resigning was a Republican from Texas, Tony Gonzalez, for similar reasons. Schiff — who claimed to be ‘sickened’ and ‘aghast’ at the accusations and what Swallwell ‘has done’ — followed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in scorning the Republicans for postponing dealing with the Gonzalez problem.” (04/21/26)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/04/21/the-aoc-schiff-thesis/
- When Legal Methods Become Rhetoric
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Marcos Giansante“In well-ordered legal traditions, disagreement about outcomes is expected. Disagreement about methods is tolerable. But the abandonment of method altogether marks a deeper rupture, one that transforms law from a system of constraint into an instrument of will. Contemporary Brazilian jurisprudence increasingly reveals such a rupture. The problem is often framed as a conflict between legal theories, or as the natural evolution of constitutional interpretation. Yet this framing misidentifies the phenomenon. What is at stake is not the triumph of one doctrine over another, but the quiet dissolution of the very structures that once constrained judicial power.” (04/21/26)
https://mises.org/power-market/when-legal-methods-become-rhetoric
- Focus on the Sixth Amendment
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Rachel Chiu“The Confrontation Clause bars certain out-of-court statements when the witness does not testify at trial and there is no opportunity for cross-examination. Although there are many situations in which different forms of out-of-court statements may be admissible, the circumstances triggering the Confrontation Clause often involve evidence that is high-stakes and accusatory. In these specific cases, a defendant’s freedom is on the line, and the statements in question can have a disproportionate and decisive impact in the absence of cross-examination. Compared to other criminal justice topics such as qualified immunity and civil asset forfeiture, this issue receives far less attention, even though the risk to a defendant’s life, personal liberty, and property is great. The erosion of the Confrontation Clause deserves scrutiny, and the Supreme Court has recently signaled possible intervention to address the problem.” (04/21/26)
- Trump’s Memory Loss
Source: The American Spectator
by Lloyd Billingsley“With support from President Trump, Congress passed a bill to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) through April 30. The president seems to have forgotten FISA’s power to harm innocents, override the judiciary, and even threaten the executive branch. That invites a look back at how it all started.” (04/21/26)
- Freedom Upsets Patterns: The Deregulation Argument Westminster Will Not Have
Source: Cobden Centre
by Elias Sanchez“The United Kingdom’s economic deceleration is conventionally attributed to fiscal consolidation, anaemic productivity growth, and the supply-side dislocations that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. These are real constraints. But treating them as primary causes rather than downstream symptoms is a misdiagnosis — and an increasingly costly one. The deeper pathology is regulatory density: an accumulated architecture of formal constraints that suppresses entrepreneurial discovery, crowds out new entrants, and reduces the adaptive capacity of institutions.” (04/21/26)
- Trump’s regime change fantasies never stood a chance
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Nancy Gallagher, Clay Ramsay, & Samuel Hickey“Nobody should be surprised that the war launched on February 28 did not accelerate anti-government protests in Iran. The survey we fielded soon after the Twelve-Day War showed signs it had a rally-around-the-flag effect. Trump also had pre-war warnings from the intelligence community that his assumptions about the Iranian public’s response were flawed. After weeks of bombing, Reuters reported that U.S. intelligence saw no imminent regime collapse. CISSM’s polling consistently finds real discontent in Iran. But Iranian discontent is not America’s to command. The favorable minority in our polling is more outward-looking, more skeptical of the domestic order, more favorable toward American people, and more interested in diplomacy than the rest of the public. But it is not a regime-change base waiting for Washington’s signal.” (04/21/26)
- Quantum Vibe, 04/21/26
Source: Big Head Press
by Scott BieserCartoon. (04/21/26)
- Supremacist Alliance: The Zionist-Hindutva Hijacking of America
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Matt Wolfson“Much of the spread of Zionist and Hindutva ideologies through powerful Jewish and Hindu spheres occurred from the efforts of connected professionals and financiers and technologists, as I have related in reports for the Libertarian Institute in August and November and December and April. But the spread of these ideologies among powerful Jews and Hindus likely also occurred because these ideologies played into the influence Jewish and Hindu players were already enjoying in American empire. Indeed, from their inceptions both Zionist and Hindutva ideology have been explicitly tuned to and so attractive to imperialists.” (04/21/26)
- Why Our Economic Intuitions Are Often Wrong
Source: The Dispatch
by Adam Omary“Economic models, rooted in assumptions of rational agents maximizing utility under constraints, have long provided elegant frameworks for understanding human behavior in markets and societies. Yet, a persistent friction exists between these idealized portrayals of human beings and the ways humans actually navigate economic choices. People frequently champion policies that contravene basic economic principles, including minimum wages presumed to boost income without increasing unemployment, rent controls expected to enhance housing affordability without reducing supply, or tariffs that run counter to comparative advantage and affordability.” (04/21/26)
https://thedispatch.com/article/economic-intuitions-evolutionary-psychology/
- Hope in the Data: Can Palestine Explain America’s Moral Shift?
Source: Antiwar.com
by Ramzy Baroud“For decades, Americans overwhelmingly aligned with Israel. This was not merely ideological; it was instructional. The public was told – repeatedly – that Israel reflected ‘American values’: democracy, civility, modernity. Palestinians and Arabs, by contrast, were framed as perpetual antagonists, initiators of violence, and ‘obstacles to peace.’ Some Americans embraced this framing on religious or ideological grounds. But for the majority, the pro-Israel position became a default – an inherited conclusion rooted in limited access to alternative information. Israel was ‘good,’ Arabs were ‘bad.’ The narrative was simple, binary, and rarely challenged. With mainstream media as the primary source of information, this perception hardened over time. Support for Palestine, and for broader Arab causes, remained confined to academic spaces and activist circles – often informed by anti-colonial and anti-imperialist frameworks, but numerically marginal and politically contained. The mainstream remained locked in place. But that lock has been broken.” (04/21/26)
- Kevin Warsh and the Erosion of the Dollar
Source: Independent Institute
by Judy L Shelton“Kevin Warsh is scheduled to testify before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday. The vote on his confirmation as Federal Reserve chairman may hinge on the Justice Department’s dropping its inquiry into whether the current chairman, Jerome Powell, testified inaccurately about cost overruns in renovating Fed headquarters. It would be a pity if we have to wait. The U.S. dollar would benefit from new thinking at the Fed. Lawmakers should be much more focused on the damage that Fed policies are inflicting on the soundness of America’s money. It’s also time that Congress, which is charged with ensuring a trustworthy currency, recognized that outsourcing this responsibility to the Fed is a big part of the problem.” (04/20/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/04/20/kevin-warsh-and-the-erosion-of-the-dollar/
- The Myth of Libertarianism
Source: The Bleeding Heart Libertarian
by Matt Zwolinski“If you had asked me in 2015 to describe the core commitments of American libertarianism, I could have done it in about a minute. Free markets, limited government, individual rights, skepticism of state power, free trade, open or liberal immigration, some version of non-interventionism abroad, a strong preference for constitutional constraints on executive authority. There would have been edge cases and internal disputes, sure, but the center of gravity was clear enough that you could gesture at it. Try to do the same today, ten years later, and you run into trouble almost immediately. In the public-facing, movement-adjacent side of libertarianism — the one that reaches audiences through podcasts, YouTube, X, and the tech-intellectual networks of the last few years — the center of gravity has shifted in ways that would have seemed inconceivable a decade ago.” (04/20/26)
https://bleedingheartlibertarian.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-libertarianism
- From Res Publica to the United States of Trump
Source: The UnPopulist
by Andy Craig“This president’s vulgar self-glorification is revolting to a self-governing people and must not stand.” (04/20/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/from-res-publica-to-the-united-states
- Palantir Has a Human Rights Policy. Its ICE Work Tells a Different Story
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Cindy Cohn & Betty Gedlu“For years, EFF has pushed technology companies to make real human rights commitments—and to live up to them. In response to growing evidence that Palantir’s tools help power abusive immigration enforcement by ICE, we sent the company a detailed letter asking how the promises in its own human rights framework extends to that work. This post explains what we asked, how Palantir responded, and why we believe those responses fall short.” (04/20/26)
- Don’t Count on the 25th Amendment To Dethrone Donald Trump
Source: Reason
by Joe Lancaster“In recent weeks, a growing number of Democrats and progressives have called on federal officials to invoke the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to remove President Donald Trump from office. Even some of Trump’s most stalwart onetime allies are joining in. While it may feel good to wishcast about booting Trump from the presidency, the 25th Amendment is perhaps the most unlikely strategy possible.” (04/20/26)
https://reason.com/2026/04/20/dont-count-on-the-25th-amendment-to-dethrone-donald-trump/
- The Good Fight, 04/21/26
Source: Yascha Mounk
“Yascha Mounk and Jacob Mchangama discuss how democracies and dictatorships alike have turned against online speech freedom.” (04/21/26)
- The Corbett Report, episode 499
Source: The Corbett Report
“The Purpose Of a System Is What It Does.” (04/21/26)
https://corbettreport.com/the-purpose-of-a-system-is-what-it-does/
- The Bryan Hyde Show, 04/21/26
Source: The Bryan Hyde Show
“Eric Peters from Eric Peters Autos joins me for our weekly conversation. There’s a lot to keep track of and Eric’s freedom-based, down-to-earth approach is a great way to get a handle on things.” (04/21/26)
- Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 04/20/26
Source: Antiwar.com
“Pakistan Tells US Blockade Is Obstacle to Iran Talks, US, Philippines Launch Major Drills, and More.” (04/20/26)
- Fountainhead Forum, episode 438
Source: Fountainhead Forum
“Colin Grabow on the Jones Act and other regulations on ships.” (04/20/26)
https://rumble.com/v78rsga-ff-438-colin-grabow-on-the-jones-act-and-other-regulations-on-ships.html
- Finding Freedom, 04/20/26
Source: Lions of Liberty
“The Empire That Never Died: How a Tiny Island Still Runs Your Money.” (04/20/26)